README.md

Gradesheet

Introduction

GradeSheet has been designed to give teachers all the tools they need to record
student grades. It is web based to make it easily accessible to everyone.
Students and parents can log into the system to check on their grades and even
communicate with their teacher(s).

Installation

This is a typical Ruby on Rails project and it is installed just like any other RoR
project. Since most of the development/testing is done on Debian & Ubuntu, it
will be simpler to get up and running if you are using one of those OSs. However,
it should run on any system that runs Rails.

Building Documentation

Gradesheet is documented using the standard, built-in RDoc system. To build
the documentation with the just run the command:
rake doc:app
However, to build better looking documentation you might want to use this command:
rake doc:app_horo
which uses the Horo template and results in documentation that is much easier
on the eyes.

Testing

Currently, Gradesheet tests are written using the standard, built-in test framework.
However, RSpec looks very attractive and when I get a bit more time I might move
them over to that. In the meantime, just use the standard Rails testing commands
to run the test (rails test:units, etc.)

I've just been turned on to Webrat[http://gitrdoc.com/brynary/webrat/tree/master]
and am very impressed with it and all of the integration tests (or the majority of them)
will be soon converted to it. So, if you want to run the full test suite, you'll
have to install the Webrat gem.

Performance testing is being implemented with the excellent JMeter[http://jakarta.apache.org/jmeter/] package. This project
uses Authlogic for user authentication and I have had no end of trouble trying to get
some performance numbers out of the system. However, a little time spent with JMeter
has gotten me a least a little way toward being able to measure the speed of the system.
This is becoming ever more important as the design solidifies and the optimization begins.